Case Study – Southwest Airlines
Case Study:
Southwest Airlines realized that people find meaning in friendships and specially favor brands that creates opportunities for them to build meaningful and lasting relationships. Their campaign was built to enhance consumer’s understanding of why people come together. It was about pulling consumers in and generating stronger brand passion than ever before. The digital era has disrupted the traditional strategy of branded communication. The customer now chooses the time and place for brand interaction. Considering that the customer is subjected to over 3000 advertising messages per day, one can rationalize that engagement is overrated because the customer has built up a subconscious resistance to responding because of sensory overload.
Southwest Airlines has successfully adopted social and mobile marketing understanding that delivering on the brand promise, effective on social platforms. The company has need able to get results through mobile and social media marketing about how well they deliver on their promise. At Southwest the company feels that they need to build individual relationships with their customers. This has meant moving away from a discreet set of campaigns that are mass blasted and more toward building profiles and designing experiences that allows them to interact individual.
Airlines are attracted to the size and power of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Several have offered special rates on airfares outside of traditional distributional venues on platforms like Groupon. This is a form of “Crowd Clout” where airlines have ability create customer frenzies with the offer of deep discounts and viral sharing using mobile devices. Southwest airlines is the leader when it comes to mobile customer satisfaction in the travel industry thanks to a simple, no-frills approach that translates well to the mobile experience.
Airline see mobile advertising as an additional touch point for their customers as they are migrating more toward mobile devices. As their customers are more comfortable using these devices, it presents a new way for them to engage with them. Southwest airlines is aiming to bolster its email list of opted-in users with a mobile ad campaign that lets users sign up for weekly messages via their devices. The mobile ads are running inside iPhone applications such as Pandora and Draw with Friends. In addition to email, the ads also play up Southwest Airlines’ social media efforts. The encourage users to tap to learn more about the company’s email program. Via a mobile landing page, users can sign up to receive weekly emails by typing their email address. Once users sign up for emails, consumers are brought up to another landing page where they can “like” the brand‘s Facebook account or follow the company on Twitter.
Additionally, users can download the southwest Airlines iPhone app via the landing page. Travel brands are among the most reliant on mobile audiences so finding ways to reach people on the go and adding them to an email database pays big dividends. Southwest Airlines partnered with connectivity provider Global Eagle Entertainment to launch the new service. Mobile opens up new opportunities for the airline industry and ca created better experience out of a less-the- enjoyable one. Southwest ‘s messaging service is one of doing so. This has helped solve business challenges by creating in airport materials to expedite the boarding process and providing user experience guidance to help optimize Southwest’s online sales channel.
The Southwest Airlines iPhone App gave customers the freedom to check in 24 hours before takeoff, received the latest flight updates right at their fingertips, log into their Rapid Rewards account and get deals no matter where they are located and on the go. They take advantage of the sentiment that people are fed with annoying a la carte fees and surcharges that some airlines add to their “discount” fares. Southwest Airlines differentiates itself as the exception to the rule by being one of the only airlines that doesn’t believe in unreasonable fees. A sports-themed interactive campaign was developed to illustrate all the ways Southwest does the customer right by by eliminating unnecessary fees. All necessary information was covered in the digital spectrum, from home page takeovers and rich media banner ads to landing pages and easy-to shares Facebook content.
To reach potential customers, gain more followers and measures results in real time, Southwest Airlines took to mobile medial looking for innovative ways to create brand loyalty. They got messages infront of people not yet following you by promoting account and tracked the growth of the follower’s base to see how people engage with every single tweet. The Southwest iPhone app was an instant hit – rising to No.4 in the iTunes store within the travel category. Segmenting is critical to email marketing. Using specific mobile-only ads lets Southwest Airlines know that these contacts are heavy mobile users and build a “list’ for sending mobile-friendly or even mobile specific emails to this audience, tailoring the design and even the copy length for the mobile channel. Additionally, email helps Southwest Airlines build a longer- term one-on-one relationship to retarget consumers in the future.
Whether it’s using mobile to hyper-personalize the experience or email to build closer to relationships, Southwest takes a discipline approach. A hyper-personal experience from Southwest could be anything from a responsive design deals email that leads to a mobile friendly offer page, the ability to get your email deals right in your mobile app or a reminder to add a car, on that trip you about to take. Like most travel companies, Southwest is allocating more of its budget to mobile projects. The idea that Southwest is on the customer’s side comes through loud and clear with strong messaging and engaging content. For Southwest Airlines, they had a need to move from traditional marketing to mobile marketing to build individual relationships with their customers and create brand loyalty. Social Marketing has become an integral part of Southwest’s marketing strategy. It became the first airline to reach 3 million fans on Facebook.
Questions
- How does Southwest airline build a mobile-only mailing list?
- If you were a competitor of Southwest Airlines, what mobile marketing strategies may yo in invest today?
- In what ways can airlines use mobile tools more effectively?